To Relativity

An episode of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei concludes with a fake show-within-a-show involving the character Kaere as a Hot Teacher. Since she's teaching geometry, she's shown strolling through several famous Escher works.

The first time we meet the Godhand in Berserk, they're in a Relativity-esque dimension filled with multidirectional staircases and a shot that resembles Another World.

A strip in an early issue of Marvel'sEpic Illustrated is about a demonic architect boasting to a lady friend about the new house he's designed, which is finally revealed to be based on a mixture of Relativity and other works. The strip concludes with a dedication "to MCE" in the shape of Escher's own logo.

Labyrinth: The Goblin King's final chamber was clearly based on this, and Sarah has a print of Relativity in her room.

During a fight/chase scene, several characters in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb fall into a RelativityPortal Picture, causing the action to become more confusing with the inconsistent gravity of the place.

In Half World, by Hiromi Goto, Melanie's mother keeps Escher prints on the wall. Later, when Melanie goes Down the Rabbit Hole, to the magical realm Half World, the staircases go both up and down like Relativity.

Warehouse 13 has the "Escher Vault," which is a room constructed like Relativity, which is constantly changing at high speed. You need special equipment of one kind or another to get through it. According to Mrs. Frederic, at least one Warehouse Agent has gotten lost in the room because they forgot to wear safety goggles when venturing inside and hasn't been seen since.

It's called the Escher Vault because the man himself was an architect on that iteration of the Warehouse. His initial design involved it folding up like a tesseract and the model of it is artifact.

Ipsen's Castle in Final Fantasy IX seems to be based on this. Described as an architectural marvel, many rooms are upside down and in one room the visitor has to slide up a pole. While in Ipsen's Castle, weapons will do more damage the lower their attack power is.

A choice adventure in the Kingdom of Loathing — more specifically, the Haunted Art Gallery — starts here, and all directions seem to be as if this work was providing directions (up, down, or sideways).

In King's Quest VII, you have to get through a room shaped like this in Archduke Fifi's manor.

Echochrome is a puzzle game based on the works of M. C. Escher. The geometries are as weird as you might expect.

To elaborate, in the game, you are allowed to "cheat" the laws of perspective because only the camera angle's perspective counts as "real". If there is a beam covering up a hole, the hole then ceases to exist. This is a necessary skill to guide the main characternote You control the camera, not the player character to safety.

One of the apartments Fry and Bender look at in the Futurama episode "I, Roommate". Bender fell down, up, and across the stairs. Fry decides they don't want to pay for a dimension they won't be using.

Briefly seen in The Simpsons Movie during Homer's dream quest, with the stairs shaped like the inside of Homer's head. One of the show's Couch Gags uses it too.

Family Guy referenced it twice. Once Stewie obtained a copy while posing as Brian's college roommate; on another occasion Peter referenced "that rap video by MC Escher", prompting a cut to Escher dressed as MC Hammer doing an incredibly bad rap song and dancing on the stairs.

In the second episode of Drawn Together, Toots convinces Clara she's pregnant after her Les Yay kiss with Foxxy, just so she can push her down a flight of stairs for laughs. When Clara "still smells pregnant," they next try the "M.C. Escher room," where Clara falls down the iconic set of circling stairs for like three minutes to kill her non-existent baby. Yes, it was that kind of show.

In one of the last episodes of "CatDog", one of Winslow's rooms hidden in CatDog's house is directly based on Relativity.

To other works

Christopher Nolanwas inspired by Escher in Inception, which has two sets of Ascending and Descending (and hence Penrose stairs)-inspired stairs: Arthur shows a fairly large one to Ariadne during her training and later makes good with an ass-kicking use of a second one in the second dream level's hotel.

Escher's work Eye is seen in Donnie Darko, as a poster on Donnie's wall.

In the Discworld novel Moving Pictures, the layout of the Library of Unseen University is described as "a topographical nightmare, [...] that would make M. C. Escher go for a good lie down, or possibly sideways." In Guards! Guards!, old-fashioned bookshops are said to be looking like "as though they were designed by M.C. Escher on a bad day".

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid includes (along with many other references to Escher, as one might infer from the title) a dialogue in which the characters find themselves inside "Convex and Concave" and "Reptiles".

In the Young Adult novel Before I Fall, it's revealed that the school bike Anna Cartullo likes M. C. Escher. Sam gives her a book of his drawings on her final day.

James Gurney's Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara features a university structure with an impossible staircase based on Escher's work known as the Scholar's Stairway; the "Pen and Rose Fraternity" that Gurney invents as the scholars associated with the stairway is a further homage to Roger Penrose and his son.

In AdventureQuest Worlds, the town of Mobius is the victim of the First Lord of Chaos: Escherion. The entire quest chain to confront him is filled with M.C. Escher references, fitting of a Lord of Chaos.

In Chrono Cross, a sojourn through a place that appears to be outside reality, or something, features a tower with an endless staircase like that in Ascending and Descending.

In Quest for Glory I, when you navigate the Brigand warlock's maze, one of the comments you make is that M.C. Escher would love this place. The maze in question is somewhat reminiscent of Relativity, but also of other Escher drawings.

The 78th level of Lemmings is titled "Tribute to M.C. Escher". The main solution to the level involves building a confusing zigzag stairway.

Monument Valley has perspective and impossible paths as a major element of game play.

Atari Games' Crystal Castles has one level with a looped staircase based on Ascending And Descending.

HyperRogue has graphics inspired by the hyperbolic tilings in the Circle Limit series.

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